The need for services to provide support for computers and computer related technologies continues to grow. Retailers provide support in their consumer outlets and may also send technicians to the consumer's home. Retailers offer computer and technology services by placing technical resources onsite at a consumer outlet to provide service to computers that are purchased at the retailer or brought to the consumer outlet for repair. In order to provide services in a consumer outlet, there needs to be a technician available. The consumer outlet must employ a minimum set of technical resources to provide coverage for the range of days and times of the week the consumer outlet is open for service and to handle at least a moderate volume of business. In order to provide an adequate level of support, the skills of the technicians should be of sufficient breadth to address the broad scope of problems that consumers may have with their computers and technology.
To conserve costs, a retailer typically staffs a minimal number of technicians at the consumer repair outlets that may be available at each retail location. With a minimal number of technicians available to support or repair computers, many times computers cannot be repaired without an extended wait. This delay to repair time introduces customer satisfaction issues. In addition, current staffing models do not result in the most efficient use of resources. During peak seasons or time periods, the consumer repair outlet may need to double and triple staffing to meet medium or short term consume support and repair demands. As there tends to be little extra resources available to meet short notice demands, the consumer repair outlet may find it difficult to provide adequate staffing for temporary overflow or peak demand situations. The solution of the present application uses remote technical support services to reduce cost and increase quality of delivery of in-home technology services as well as at consumer outlets.
Whether the intent is to provide a single location or a large numbers of retail locations, hiring additional labor in lock step with the volume of work is expensive and challenging. Demand for support and repair work at any single consumer repair outlet may be sporadic and may not grow in the same way as adding additional resources to the labor pool. For larger retailers with multiple consumer repair outlets, onsite resources cannot be shared between outlets unless they happen to be geographically located near each other. For example, in a large retail chain that has 500 consumer outlets, the retailer needs to hire at least 500 technicians if they want to provide coverage in all consumer outlets. Even though there are at least 500 technicians working across all consumer outlets at any one times, there may only be enough aggregate support and repair work to keep only 125 technicians busy across all the consumer outlets.
Current staffing and service delivery models in the consumer outlets have inherent quality issues. Retailers find it difficult to justify the hiring of skilled managers to manage a small pool of technical resources. With less skilled technical mangers on non-technical mangers, providing adequate oversight to the quality and delivery services is difficult. It is also difficult to attract technically skilled labor to work in an environment where the work may be sporadic, covers a broad range of issues, and with inadequate oversight. As a result, the work the technical laborer is asked to perform may extend beyond his or her capability or comfort. With a small labor pool and inadequate management oversight, it is also challenging to provide a career growth path to attract the desired technically skilled labor.
Another way to provide support and repair of computers and electronics of consumers is through in-home services. In-home support services may be delivered via technical labor visiting the home to solve problems, provision of information to the home in the form of emails, online chat and phone, or remotely attaching to the devices and providing direct support. The delivery of labor to the home is immensely inefficient because of travel time and because the nature of the work is indeterminate. Resolving a problem in the home may require a short visit or a long visit, and may not be known until the technical labor is on-site. As a result, in home service providers typically schedule the availability of technicians with slack time to account for the indeterminate nature of the work as well as travel. The use of slack time to account for the nature of the work is wasteful and increases the amount of additional labor that may needed as demand increases. Not using slack time or using less slack time may decrease the availability of technicians to handle the next customer. This may result in abandoned customers, decreased response time and decrease customer satisfaction. As with the consumer repair outlet, the nature of the work in a home is also broad in technical scope as it involves many different devices and software. This makes it very difficult if not nearly impossible for a service provider to find someone who is able to address the full spectrum of work in the home. Often times follow-up visits must be scheduled to complete work which could not be resolved by the dispatched technician. This results in longer delays in resolving the issue at home decreasing the customer's satisfaction with the support experience.